Our departure draws near. We plan to leave Chapada with all our gear in tow either this evening, in time to catch the nine-hour bus at 10:30 p.m. to Vila Bella from Cuiaba. Alternatively, we will leave bright and early tomorrow morning (the better option at the moment and my personal preference. I’d like to see the view from the bus as we are traveling).

We are nearly done packing – we need to do a dry run with packing the canoes to ensure we have enough webbing etc. and aren’t forgetting anything critical.

Carolina – a friend Brooke met at the NOLS Mexico branch a few years ago – brought with her a satellite phone, GPS, and safety kits, which is good, but hopefully none of it will need to be used. Last night the three of us spread the maps out across the kitchen table and plotted a tentative plan – we know things could change, but we do have our goals in mind and we wanted to write everything down.

The conversation went a little bit like this:

me: So, we leave from Vila Bella, right?

Brooke: Yes, that’s right.

me: And our proposed take-out is um, I forgot – Puerto Negro?

Brooke (laughing): No, geez. Costa Marquez.

me: Oh, ok. And how far is that?

Brooke: 400 miles.

me: What!? 400 miles?

Brooke: Oh no, wait, 400 kilometers.

me (laughing): And what is our first possible take out?

Brooke: Poussada das Oncas. About 120 kilometers.

me: And the second possible one?

Brooke: Pimenteiras do Oeste.

me: And how far is that?

Brooke: Six days paddle.

me: What about kilometers? We have to work with the same measurement here.

Brooke: I don’t know. It is impossible to tell.

me: Well, how many days should I put down for our trip from Vila Bella to Costa Marquez?

Brooke: I think 12 to 14. Mario said it took him and his friends 10 days to go from just above Vila Bella to the Poussada das Oncas.

me: Ok, but wait – that doesn’t make sense. You think it will take us just two to four days extra to go the additional three hundred kilometers between the Poussada and Costa Marquez?

Brooke: I know, mixed messages.

This all sounds rather comical – and in a lot of ways it is. Brooke, Carolina, and I laughed quite a bit over the ambiguities surrounding our route, the fact that we are taking a nine-hour bus ride to the put-in and a 20-hour bus ride from the take-out (Carolina: “where are we going Brooke?), and the somewhat vague maps that make it difficult to determine something as simple as the distance from point A to point B.

This map below shows the various major rivers in Brazil. The Guapore River can be found in the west, forming the border with Bolivia. It is not the best image, but it gives a better idea of where we are headed. Right now we are in Chapada – a small town just to the east of Cuiaba.

We have been talking to a number of people who have either done this river or know the area well – there aren’t many of them and all are Brazilians. The reassuring point is that none of them seem surprised or worried – oddly, they are are all just excited about the idea that three foreign women are planning this kind of trip. We even got an offer to write an article for a glossy new Brazillian magazine, which would be nice if only because the photos would show up really nicely.

When traveling to foreign places and trying to determine whether an adventure is safe or not, it is imperative to ask the locals what they think. Of course, you can get a range of responses and you must judge accordingly. If they tell you it is impossible or crazy or dangerous, then you must heed the advice, but also realize that they might think this only because the thought never crossed their minds to do something like that. In this case, you have to probe a bit more to determine whether

they are telling you it is impossible because well, it really is impossible and you might die – or because of the first reason I mentioned.

The good news is that usually when they tell you that it is fine, no worries, it usually is fine, no worries. Since the responses we have received have overwhelmingly been in this latter camp, our risk analysis assessment is that we will be A-OK.